Getting out of tricky situations isn't easy. But along the way, I get to hang out with princesses (they never wear their crowns), camel jockeys (literally!) and famous (well at least quasi-famous) people...all for the love of media.

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Saturday, May 7, 2016

Selena, Annie, and More Stupid Advertising from Across the Pond

Okay, so where am I?

(More on that in a minute).

In between my regular job (well, it's not so regular, it's actually invigorating), working with the team to prepare the campaign overview for the Clio submission (it's hard to condense so much genius into a two-minute video) and re-writing scripts for my Japanese television show, I'm continuing my mission to rid the airwaves and magazines of sexist advertising.

Not that it will happen anytime soon.

*Sigh*

Tip of the hat to Annie Apple, mother of New York Giants top draft pick Eli Apple in her quest to keep women who collect athlete intimacy as trophies away from her son:

What exactly is a cleavage action pic?

Gosh, I'm so old.

The seats were pretty, pretty good last night.

But Vegas will make you feel old even if you ARE twentysomething and can stay up for 30 hours consuming free drinks and betting the come line on the craps tables.

Yes, Las Vegas, home of my old Draper Days getaways, is exactly where I am.

A much needed side trip was in order to reboot the creative engines, film a commercial, and shake my head at the overwhelming homage to "Sex Sells Advertising" that proliferates the landscape. (More on Sex Sells in another column.) Another reason to take that 45-minute flight from LAX was to see an old friend who was kicking off her concert tour,

I've known Selena Gomez for nearly a decade, first meeting her at a St. Jude's benefit gala in Beverly Hills. There was a fashion show and she was none too happy that her dress was too provocative. Somehow I was pulled into the tornado because she wasn't going on and as the only father in the general vicinity, she wanted some backup that the dress was too much for a 14 year-old to wear. I had to agree that a neckline that plunged down to her belly button was over the top. Long story short, they got her a new dress and now I get to go to Revival Concert Tour opening nights in Sin City.

Great show Selena.

Ride Me All Day

Meanwhile, back in the United Kingdom, some fool who runs the advertising department for a Welsh bus company greenlit a campaign that features a topless woman holding a sign that reads: "ride me all day for £3." Cardiff will never be the same.

The now controversial ad campaign prompted social media outrage and of following widespread outrage on social media calling the campaign "sexist" and "vile." Tip of the hat to whomever genius didn't focus group these ads before they ran. That's like Advertising 301. Gotta focus group ad campaigns when they are going out-of-home. One slip and you're going to wind up with a lot of bad publicity.

Pretty shocking that there are still ad agencies that think this an acceptable method to use this kind of imagery to sell a bus ticket.

In a related note, the adverts featuring males doing the exact same thing does not appear to have caused as much outrage. Shocker!